


The Dimming Days

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [40]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Dinosaurs, Gen, Limb loss, Strawberries, Survival, by which i mean there is no science here just convenience, off-world trope, please note the gore warning kids, reclaiming platonic affection from the hellpit of toxic masculinity, wibbly-wobbly space and other-planet science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 11:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18051539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: An off-world experience turns deadly and survival is a matter of Batman being alive enough to keep doing Batman things.Dev's known this since the minute they ended up here by accident, but Bruce doesn't seem to grasp that.





	The Dimming Days

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shearwater's "Black Eyes"  
> Eventually, I might write a follow-up that repairs things for CECverse, see notes after.

“Don’t move.”

The order is harsh and low, from right behind where Kiran Devabhaktuni stands in the knee-high green grass. The thrum of the zeta tube is still ringing in his ears, but the landscape before him is not the cave or the Watchtower. It’s a broad field, edged with sheer cliffs in the distance on one side, and towering leafy trees on the other.

Batman steps beside him, one arm out as if he intends to shield Dev from some invisible threat. Dev isn’t in the mood to complain, since he’s in shirtsleeves and had been expecting the smooth, painted walls of an orbiting space station.

This is not a space station.

Dev’s fairly certain it isn’t earth, either.

The queasiness of the zeta transport isn’t unusual and it’s almost comforting, how familiar that sensation is when everything else feels so off.

There’s a flicker of movement, just a bending of grass in Dev’s peripheral, and he forgets the order to hold still when his attention is jerked in that direction to look. Batman’s head swivels that way, too, and then when Dev is still trying to determine  _what_  exactly he saw, Batman grabs Dev’s arm with a low noise of alarm.

Then the world— whichever one he’s on— goes upside down.

Pressure white-hot, so searing Dev  _knows_  it will hurt before it does, closes on his leg and hauls him out of Batman’s grip so hard and fast he hears something in his shoulder pop. Every part of him rattles like a limp sack of bones when he’s shaken in the air like a rag doll.

He screams when his stomach is pierced, and for an instant the ringing in his ears is as painful as the yellowed talon he catches a brief glimpse of in his gut.

Then, the monster flings him across the field.

He lands hard, his vision blacking out for a second, while he rolls through the grass with the speed of the throw.

A heartbeat later, he’s on his knees despite the pain, panting and staring at the thing that attacked him. He needs to keep getting up, up, until he’s on his feet, but his mind shorts out and all he can do is kneel with a hand to his stomach while his shoulders heave.

It’s a sodding dinosaur. A bloody fucking dinosaur, massive and curved teeth like broken beer bottles tinged pink with bloodied saliva, with a deep throat working rhythmically as it stares. The long tail, snaked low across the ground for balance, curls up at the tip while it towers over him by a meter at least. It has the vague shape of a raptor but  _wrong_  somehow.

Maybe it’s just the fact that it isn’t skeleton on a polished wood stand.

It lunges for him and inches away from his face, it throws its stinking head back in a discordant double-toned shriek of pain and rage that hurts Dev’s ears so badly he presses both hands over them.

He’s still got hands slick with blood clapped on either side of his skull when the dinosaur is hauled back inch by inch, and that’s when he can see the grapple line embedded in its rough, tanned gold side.

It’s the same color as the grass, he thinks idly and ridiculously, while kneeling and covering his ears and watching the thing hiss and turn to attack Batman.

“Run!” comes a faint yell, through his tightly pressed fingers. He realizes he’s pressing so hard his head and hands ache and he lets them drop to hold his stomach again.

“Run!” comes the order, again, while he’s watching Batman dodge the thing’s massive head swipe, and then he realizes the order is being given  _to him_. He staggers to his feet, scans the landscape for shelter, and bolts toward the cliffs.

The pincing sound of clawed feet on packed dirt follows him and he doesn’t dare turn, but he does look back a second later when there’s a thud. Batman is on top of the dinosaur, while it struggles to get up from where it fell.

Dev keeps running, barely registering the limp in his stride.

Behind him, there’s an angry shout and another roar. A small explosion rocks the ground and he stumbles, a black blur soaring past his shoulder. Batman rolls into a smoother landing than Dev’s own, even though part of his chest armor is cracked and ripped away. He doesn’t seem to notice, however— he’s on his feet and sprinting past Dev toward the dinosaur.

Dev hears, rather than sees, the collision a mere meter or two behind him. The cliffs are as distant as they looked and he knows there’s no way. If Batman goes down, ten meters or thirty meters won’t matter. Dev’s as good as dead, easy prey, and he keeps running anyway because he was told to.

It’s the agonized scream that stops him, and he turns, full of dread and fury.

That’s  _Batman_. How dare the universe hand him over to a sodding dinosaur, of all things.

Batman, his cowled head tipped back, is swaying as he climbs to his feet between Dev and the dinosaur. The dinosaur has an arm, the tips of the black gauntlet spikes glistening with blood, between its teeth, and it throws its own head back like a bird to swallow the arm.

Its movement is curious and slow for a step, now that it knows the prey is done fleeing or fighting. After that one deliberate and stalking step it snatches at Batman and lifts him lightning fast in its taloned arms.

Dev wants to close his eyes and he cannot.

Then, when the dinosaur is about to clamp jaws down on Batman’s head, there’s a blink of movement and suddenly Batman is on its neck with his arm and chest pinching it’s jaws shut while it writhes and hisses and bucks. He doesn’t let go.

And Dev knows in that instant, even if he doesn’t know how, that the dinosaur isn’t going to kill either of them, because it’s  _Batman_. He doesn’t know how he’ll pull it off, only that he will.

Then the sky goes dark against the bright boom where the dinosaur is.

Batman, for a second time, is hurled through the air, this time by the blast and in a rain of animal guts and hide. Dev sprints toward him, no longer worried about the dinosaur that is simply  _gone_.

He drops to his knees in alien grass by Batman, who is bleeding from the stump of an arm and from lacerations on his chest and those are just the ones Dev can  _see_. The white teeth, usually startling enough beneath the black cowl, are crimson with blood that’s staining his lips, and Dev can see them because Batman is laughing.

It’s a ragged, broken laugh, blatantly crazy and Dev thinks with a touch of horror that he shouldn’t find it  _reassuring_ like he does. He’s fumbling automatically for the two pockets on the utility belt that have medical supplies in them, the ones Batman gave him the inventory lists for and made him practice accessing again and again so he could open them in an emergency without shocking himself getting into the wrong ones.

“I was holding the grenade.” Batman chokes on a laugh that ends in a groan. “When it…I knew it was over. I was holding the grenade.”

“Sodding shut up,” Dev orders, shaking the tiny canister of blood-clotting foam spray. He pulls the stump of arm, gone just below the elbow, onto his lap to keep it from the dirt and holds the canister under one arm while he finds and pinches the torn and pumping artery. “Something hot. A match, a lighter, anything.”

Batman’s other arm is moving too slowly when he pats another compartment on the belt and pops it open. He hands Dev a slender stick that looks like a shrunken car dash lighter and his thumb shakes tapping the button.

“You…you…press…”

“Got it,” Dev says, taking it and holding the button. A thin coil glows orange in an instant and Dev’s own fingertip gets singed making sure the artery seals.

Batman doesn’t make a sound except for another hoarse laugh that borders on hysterical.

“Disable the suit,” Dev snaps, thinking of shock and mentally plotting treatment without supplies. He’s done work in a hospital running out of things in an emergency before but this is new, and the  _nothingness_  of the resources available to him currently is so overwhelming that he might literally go mental if he thinks about it for long.

Batman is already shaking when he presses a series of hidden buttons on the belt and then the cowl. Dev doesn’t know how he manages moving at all, only that he trusted him to manage it because of who he is.

A shadow moves over his field of vision and Dev’s heart, thudding and panicked as he already is, nearly stops.

“Bloody fuck,” he swears in relief when he looks up and sees it’s just a cloud moving across the sun. It fills him with irrational anger that it’s so ordinary, so earth-like, and then another thought strikes him.

He’s got the stump covered in pale green sealing foam, hardening as it’s streaked with blood— it’s a temporary measure and he’ll have to find a way to really close the arm— when he pats Batman’s cheek to get his lolling attention.

“Is there another one, do you think? Do you think they live in packs?”

“If there is,” Batman slurs, “I’ll figh’ i’. S’art wi…with gre’ade nex’ time.”

“Feet,” Dev orders, like it’s a reasonable thing to ask of a man going into shock after losing an arm to a dinosaur and then being caught in an explosion.

“Hnnn,” Batman says, shaking his head. “Fi’ minu’es.”

“Up,” Dev says again, firmly. “You’re the goddamn Batman right now. No whinging. Get the bloody fuck up. We’re not sitting here like sodding ducks to get picked off.”

“Nobody,” Batman says, his voice dropping an octave so it’s nearly pure growl, “is picking you off.”

The consonants, as he climbs to his feet, become pronounced and clipped instead of slurred. Dev drags Batman’s intact arm around his shoulders and keeps him upright when he sways.

“Trees or cliffs,” Dev says. He could hazard a guess but keeping Batman mentally engaged will help more than not. Later, maybe, he will feel bad about asking so much of a man in medical crisis.

Maybe.

If they’re both alive, maybe he won’t.

“Cliffs. Use sonic pulse to clear out cave. Hide there.”

“What if there’s not a cave, mate?” Dev asks, dragging him that direction. Batman’s feet obediently follow, footfalls heavy as he goes with the slight pull.

“Another grenade,” Batman says, slight gasps between his words now. The growl has faded to a thin, curling quality, like if the wind blows the wrong way he’ll just be done and dried up. “Make a cave.”

Despite himself, Dev laughs, clamping it down in his throat when it has echoes of that same borderline hysteria he heard in Batman earlier.

“You can’t just go about making caves to suit yourself,” he says, wishing he could sit down and drag the cliffs closer to them. They’re so far and Batman is getting heavier by the second, a pained whine in his throat when he steps. Dev hates making him move.

There’s no answer and when he glances over, Batman’s jaw is tight and pale, a trickle of blood at one corner of his lips.

It is the longest walk Dev has ever taken in the whole of his life.

By the time they reach the cliff face, Batman is holding more of his own weight on his feet but it somehow feels heavier to Dev. The silence is something he lost the energy to fill a hundred meters ago, and the trembling in Batman’s limbs fills him with cold worry.

They somehow find a cave almost right off, as if Batman knew it would be there or merely willed it into existence. He tries to convince Dev to stand back when he throws the sonic pulse device into the narrow mouth, but Dev refuses to let go of him and it’s a good thing because Batman’s knees give out when they try to clear the last few meters for safety from the blast. Dev drags him, stumbling, grateful for every single workout session he complained about being bullied into.

“Thirty minutes,” Batman wheezes, while their ears are still popping and ringing. “Let the cliff settle again.”

“Then we start now,” Dev says, lowering him to his back in the grass. “You’ve given me plenty of work to do.”

In response, Batman merely licks his lips and stares at the sky and that alone scares Dev more than anything in the last few hours.

There’s a tube of antibiotic ointment and a needle and dental floss— they are not ideal supplies, but they’re what fit in a belt compartment to function as temporary measures. There’s also a roll of medical tape and a tiny stack of alcohol wipes.

Batman hisses through his clenched teeth when Dev begins swabbing injuries as he catalogues them. Only the deepest of the bite or claw marks and lacerations will get sutures. They have a limited amount of floss, so the rest will have to do with medical tape and just scab and scar. None of them will be pretty when it’s over.

There are plenty of bruises and possibly some hairline fractures but nothing compound or complicated. When he’s determined the worst of it is the arm and the gashes across Batman’s chest, Dev pats his cheek again.

“Sweetheart, time to get up. We’ve a cave to get to.”

Moving to his own feet after thirty minutes of close work is an exercise in stirred agony. Suturing was enough to remind him his shoulder is wrenched, but he’d nearly forgotten that a wicked talon dug into his stomach. It forces a pained suck of breath when he stands. That, more than the announcement, forces Batman’s eyes to flicker open beneath the cowl.

“What,” he says.

“Just scratches,” Dev lies. “I’m just a sodding infant compared to you.”

“Comm isn’t raising anyone,” Batman says instead of insisting on details.

Batman raises his uninjured left arm and Dev bends to clasp it with his own good one, and together they get Batman on his feet. They stand for a moment while Batman leans more and more on Dev, and then he twists to vomit in the grass.

“When we get home,” Dev says, “I’m burning the sodding T-Rex in the cave.”

“No,” Batman says, voice raw with exhaustion while he plods forward one halting step at a time. His arm around Dev’s neck is like iron weight, trembling slightly.

The cave is a narrow opening into a cavern the size of the dining room at the Manor. There’s a small waterfall and curved pool on one end. Dev gives an incredulous scoff of a bitter laugh looking at it. If the universe decided to be kind, he would have preferred the gesture sooner.

Batman sits down heavily on the smooth rock floor and taps a compartment on his belt.

“Test the water,” he says. “Build a fire.”

Dev pries the compartment open and follows the instructions Batman gives him in a low, drained murmur. He’s moving stiffly himself and perversely grateful Batman is too out of it to see it.

The water reads as safe and he takes a long drink from a foil pouch he fills, and then helps Batman drink some.

He has the fire going with sticks and brush gathered from along the walls and just outside, smoke vented toward the exit with rocks, when he kneels next to Batman and swallows hard.

“I need to cauterize it or suture it,” he says. “That foam won’t hold and we can’t risk it disintegrating at the wrong moment. I’m going to give you the morphine.”

“No,” Batman says.

“I’m not bloody asking,” Dev snaps. “Morphine, and the antibiotics you’ve got so it doesn’t get sodding infected. I can try to suture it but cauterizing will be faster, and the adjusting I’d have to do with dermis will be fucking hell.”

“Suture it,” Batman says, his voice tight and hard. “I can handle it.”

Neither speak during the twenty minutes it takes Dev to get things as set up as he can— the morphine injected and kicking in, the flat batarang in the tiny coals of a tiny fire, water ready in the boot he tugged off of Batman.

He hesitates and reaches forward, unclasping the cowl and gently working it off. Bruce is pale, his hair matted, a bruise blooming on his cheek and around one eye.

“Leave it,” he croaks, when Dev sets it aside.

“I’m sorry, mate,” Dev says. “I need to see your face. I need to know what you won’t tell me.”

Bruce lets his head drop on the rock then, closing his eyes.

Dev surveys the meager spread of supplies and rides out the sick lurch in his gut at the horror of how little it is, how fucking irresponsible it is to think he should ever do something like this with these kinds of tools. And then, there’s the nausea at the thought that he has no choice.

He glances at Bruce to see the man’s unfocused gaze drifting around the cave. It’s hard to tell if it’s morphine or intentional detachment, but he’s not going to risk drawing his attention and pulling him out of it either way.

The foam crumbles beneath his fingers when he begins to examine it, and then he’s working faster than he meant to begin because he has no choice. Blood seeps over his hands and everything, staining the rock and making it slick beneath Dev’s knees.

It’s this, in the end, that is the problem. He has no scalpel and his fingers alone, stained orange with the antiseptic gel they had one single packet of, cannot get a good grip on the lip of torn skin. They slip over tissue and shredded, slick muscle and splintered bone. The file at his side is already bright with blood when he picks it up and dulls the bone as quickly as he can, while Bruce groans from deep in his chest.

Everything is too slippery, there’s too much blood and he can’t work fast enough— the second time Bruce turns his head to puke, the floss in his hands pulls through the skin Dev just pierced and then snaps in his grip.

“I’m sorry,” Dev says, the heat of the batarang seeping through the cloth wrapped around and around one side when he grips it.

It takes seconds and the stench of burning flesh and charred bone fills the cave, overpowering the smell of vomited bile, and the odors linger, along with the screams ringing in Dev’s ears. In all the ways his ears have been tortured today, this is the worst.

Bruce has passed out and is shaking even while unconscious. Dev cleans and wraps the burns as well as he can and then sits with his back to him while he washes his torn shirt, his leg, and his stomach as well as he can in the pool.

His teeth chatter and sweat drips down his head while he spares a bit of the floss and sutures the deep gash in his abdomen, but he doesn’t do anything for the puncture wounds on his leg other than cleaning them.

The first dose of antibiotics is one he gets Bruce to swallow while unconscious— they have five days of them, in tiny and precious little pink pills.

The boot is filled with water over and over while he rinses away blood and puke, watching it slough out of the cave on a slight downward slope. It’s his shirt he uses to wipe Bruce’s face and neck off, before washing it again and thinking he’ll never complain about laundry ever again.

He pulls his shirt back on, still wet, and fights off the briefest glimmer of self-reproach at what he’s already decided to do. It’s barely even a decision, mostly just a fact, and he won’t let himself challenge it.

Dev forces himself to go gather more brush for the dying fire, his heart thudding like a locomotive the entire time he’s out in the open alone. He checks Bruce’s pulse as soon as he’s back inside.

It’s over an hour later when the adrenaline drop-off finally hits, brutal and hard after hours of suspension.

Dev knows Bruce is awake because Bruce pushes himself to sit up, another whine in his throat that cuts Dev like a knife.

Dev, his head buried in his knees, snaps half-heartedly at him to not move.

But Bruce is at his side anyway, his good arm around Dev’s shaking back. The pressure on his sore, strained shoulder is a low burn that Dev welcomes because it’s something real in the midst of rattling panic.

“Lie the sodding fuck down, I’m fine,” Dev grounds out.

“You’re doing good work,” Bruce says to that, in a voice warped brittle with pain but still determined. “You made hard calls but you made smart ones.”

“Bloody hell,” Dev rasps. “Fuck off.”

But Bruce’s arm just tightens around him and Dev, despite his words, leans into it and matches his breath— long inhale, slow exhale— to the rhythm of Bruce’s chest against his side.

“I’m sorry,” Dev mumbles, when he doesn’t feel so shaken to pieces. He drags an arm across his face. “You need to lie down, and I mean it this time, Wayne.”

Bruce, his matted and sweaty hair hanging over his brow, shakes his head.

“No time,” he says, reaching for his boot. He dumps it out and tries to put it on with one hand. “If we want to survive, we need to work.”

With a tight nod, Dev agrees and helps push the boot on.

“Right, then,” he says. “What do I do?”

* * *

By that night, Dev has stopped marveling in his new appreciation for Bruce’s, well, Batmanish willpower. What should have been weeks of recovery is apparently being postponed by nothing but sheer survival drive and some impossible depth of stamina.

On the morning of the first full day, Bruce scouts the territory around them with Dev close behind, and they find the creaking remnants of a treehouse village in the towering oaks opposite the cliffs.

It’s just as well, too, because Dev doesn’t think Bruce could make it back across the vast fields in the same day. Dev insists on holding the cape and boots while Bruce swings himself up old ladders. He’s testing them for how well they hold weight, and by the time he’s five meters off the ground, Dev’s heart skips a beat every time Bruce lets go of a rung to swing his only hand up to grab the next one.

The second treehouse is deemed stable enough, even with its rough and weather-rotted wood. Dev is grateful, as awful as it is, that Bruce is distracted by his own focus and pain management— it means Dev’s legitimate excuse of acrophobia lets him climb slowly while his stomach boils inside him and Bruce doesn’t notice the practiced attempt at hiding injury.

Dev has never been moved to the point of tears over the existence of walls before, but it’s a close thing when he gets to the top and the enclosure is more house-like than mere railed platforms.

They are quiet while they wrap the bones they find in the mildewed bed— a humanoid adult— and Bruce’s voice is very low when he says, “We should be safe from animal attack here. There must have been some illness.”

Neither of them mention the empty cradle in the bedroom, but Dev has enough in him to be relieved that it’s empty. It isn’t their tragedy to clean up, and as callous as that is, he doesn’t know if he could handle more right now.

It doesn’t take long to fall into a routine.

During the day, they work together gathering water and plants Bruce deems edible. It’s a risk each time, regardless of similarity or even dried, preserved scraps they find in the treehouse for comparison. Bruce insists on testing each plant himself, and making Dev wait three hours, until Dev is so terrified and annoyed by this method that the third time they need to test he shoves the thing in his mouth and chews before Bruce can say a word.

It stings his mouth but there are no ill effects otherwise, and  _lucky, lucky, lucky_  echoes in his head every single time they eat anything at all that isn’t sliced slivers of protein bar.

Bruce doesn’t talk to him for half a day, after that.

Dev has to hide throwing up the next day, because he knows it’s the throbbing gash in his stomach and not the food, but he also knows Bruce wouldn’t accept a dishonest excuse and then they’d lose a food source for nothing, or Bruce would know things Dev doesn’t want him to know yet.

Every night, the air gets cold and they huddle in the bed together under Bruce’s cape. It seems to be the only time he cannot fend off the wracking pain, and his initial protests quickly give way to him clinging to Dev’s hand while he alternates sleeping and silently weeping.

The first two nights are the worst and then Bruce seems to be slowly, slowly improving. It’s a tiny miracle Dev doesn’t have to fight him on the antibiotics and maybe it’s because Bruce knows he can’t risk  _not_  taking them right now. He keeps up basic wound care with their limited supplies and is glad Bruce is too busy to notice the low grade fever Dev can’t seem to shake.

Bruce talks through his plan during the day for building up enough resources that they can go further from their new home base, scout for more supplies and possibly tech (though he reminds Dev every time it comes up that this is a slim wisp of a chance). He’s planning on using explosives from his belt to fashion a rudimentary satellite beacon and launch it, hope it hits the atmosphere and breaks free into orbit.

It’s an incredibly brilliant plan, every detail hammered out while they gather and work to live without starving or remaining defenseless. Bruce makes arrowheads and lashes them to sticks to make spears, and the entire time Dev marvels at what kind of a man he is that even this looks natural on him. There is minimal trial and error— Bruce does these things as if he’s been doing them his entire life, like he was born to it, and Dev merely keeps his hands busy with whatever Bruce instructs him to do. If his hands fumble from weakness, he blames it on clumsy lack of skill with the tools, and Bruce says nothing.

Once, he nearly asks where Bruce learned it all, but then decides that there likely isn’t a neat answer free of triggering flashbacks or even condensed into one experience. He’s either absorbed it via survival or he’s doing it now for the first time, and good at it because he must be.

They don’t talk much about things back home and it’s not until the fifth day, ten minutes after Bruce swallows the last antibiotic, that Dev realizes how little they’ve been talking at all. He’s cleaning wounds with rote and memorized gentleness, and pauses so long that Bruce’s voice breaks through the noise in his aching head.

“Is something wrong.”

It should be full of terror, because Dev’s head is bent over lacerations that could be a death sentence if they turned necrotic instead of slowly healing like they are. But the question is merely that same flat inflection, driven by necessity.

“No,” Dev says, resuming his work, the one genuinely useful thing he’s been doing.

“You’ve stopped swearing,” Bruce says, and there, that one has just the barest hint of genuine concern.

“I’m sodding shattered,” Dev says, and this isn’t a lie, because he’s been working sunup to sundown for days. Bruce has been, too, so Dev hopes he just accepts it at face value.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, his tone so soft and kind and thick with a half-dozen emotions at once— things he must certainly hide nearly all the time— that Dev freezes again and looks up to meet his gaze. It’s clear, sharp blue ringed by his own shadows of exhaustion. “You should take a break tonight. Let me finish up down there.”

“No,” Dev says, more harshly than he means. “If you’re working, I’m working. That’s the only bloody way this works at all.”

“Alright,” Bruce says evenly, something distant in his gaze.

He’s looks over Dev’s shoulder when Dev cleans his arm stump, and Dev glances out of habit to gauge his pain level. His skin has gone paper white, his lips pressed tightly to keep them from trembling, and they’re bloodless with the pressure. They look almost blue and a mental flicker of Bruce dead and lifeless is all Dev needs to hurry and pull himself back together.

Or, he thinks he’s done so.

Bruce grabs his head when Dev’s finished wrapping the limb in cleaned and moist cloths, his fingers warm and strong against the back of Dev’s neck. He lets Bruce pull his head forward and down, and feels the kiss dropped roughly in his hair.

He’s glad it wasn’t his forehead, and at the same time swept away in the tears springing to his eyes and just how much the gesture shoots right through him. For the first time, he feels a pang of guilt at what he knows is coming— what he’s suspected since two days ago and has only become more certain of since.

“I’m going to get water. We’re both staying in tonight,” Bruce says, standing and striding toward the door that leads to the ladder.

Dev sits on the floor, his exhaustion creeping and mingling with the moored off sensation of illness, and he thinks about the satisfaction of watching the last little antibiotic pill disappear into Bruce’s mouth.

There’s no way he can argue against it or refuse anymore, split the dosage and make it ineffective for both of them, or make Dev take them alone. Dev didn’t realize how much he was waiting on that moment until it arrived, and now he feels done, down to his bones.

Still, he cleans up around him when he hears Bruce climbing the ladder again. The staccato  _thu-thump_  of his one-armed method always fills Dev with unease.

They end up in the bed while the sun isn’t quite down, an hour earlier than usual, and Dev can barely keep his eyes open.

“Here,” Bruce says, pressing something into his hand.

It’s pink and small and for a horrified moment Dev thinks he somehow failed and Bruce saved the antibiotics. Then he pinches it, and it’s not at all the same as a pill— it’s soft and squishy, like a bit of foam or sponge.

“You look frightened,” Bruce says, with that voice that’s gentle and solid. “Don’t be. It’s just strawberry.”

“What,” Dev says.

“Freeze dried strawberries. Astronaut food. I was saving it. It has barely any nutritional value, but we might as well.”

The tiny glimmer of hopefulness in Bruce’s expression hurts Dev more than his stomach has for days. He’s trying to make Dev feel better and all Dev feels is yawning, consuming guilt. He knows Bruce and he knows Bruce will blame himself.

“Space food,” he says instead of whatever is in his head on the tip of his tongue. “Fitting.”

There’s a moment of nothing and then Bruce laughs— Dev sees blood on his teeth for a second and then blinks and it’s gone.

After almost a week of eating bland or bitter plants and scavenged foods, the strawberry is the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. They eat the entire packet without speaking and then Dev can’t anymore, he can’t be awake, he can’t look at him.

Tomorrow, they’ll talk.

Dev puts his head down on the bundle of cloth over grass that’s a pillow, and he makes himself speak. Some things shouldn’t wait a day; he’s driven by a sense of urgency in his chest. His face is close to Bruce’s because the bed doesn’t give them room for room.

Exhaustion must have been hitting Bruce at the same time, because he looks wan and drained and his hand reaches for Dev’s and Dev grabs it.

“It’s not your fault,” Dev says. “I want you to know that. Alfie might tell you, but you need to know it from someone who’s bloody here with you. It isn’t and you aren’t allowed to act like it sodding is.”

“Hn,” Bruce says.

“I’m bloody serious, Wayne,” Dev says, squeezing his hand. “Look at me.”

Bruce’s breath brushes the skin just beneath his beard when he turns his head to look, his eyes open and clouded with pain they’d hidden earlier. Dev knows the breath is warm but it feels cool, soothing.

“It isn’t your fault,” Dev says again. “You’re bloody phenomenal.”

“I’m trying to sleep, Dev,” Bruce says, closing his eyes again. His voice is tight the way it is when he’s fending off sudden emotion, a little different from the way it sounds when he’s just in physical pain. Dev’s heard enough to know the difference.

A second later, right before Dev slips into sleep, there’s a quiet, “Thank you.”

* * *

When Dev wakes, it is to noise and bright light and pain and nausea. He blinks at the wooden ceiling and tries to piece together the sounds into a coherent picture, processing a second later that he’s alone on the bed and his shirt is off and there’s a cold cloth on his forehead. His hand reaches for it, bewildered, and then realization slams into him like a truck.

“Leave it,” Bruce snaps, from where he’s kneeling next to the bed and looking for all the world like a stormcloud poured into skin.

The throbbing stomach wound has been cleaned, but it’s still red and swollen and by the way every inch of him hurts Dev knows the infection has spread.

So much for breaking it gently.

“I was going to bloody tell you,” Dev says, irritated at himself for this failing. “And it doesn’t change anything. I’ll work until I can’t.”

“You fucking hypocrite,” Bruce snarls. He stands up, hand balling into a fist at his side. “You…you…the number of times you’ve  _laid into me_  and I’ve let you, for hiding things that…”

“You needed to get better,” Dev protests, sitting up. His gut almost rebels right then, onto the floor, and he chokes it down. The cloth slips off his head. “You needed what little medication we had instead of sodding refusing it for me.”

“We could have split it,” Bruce growls.

“The bloody hell you would have agreed to that,” Dev snaps. “Don’t sodding tell me you would have.”

“How am I supposed to get you home alive if you won’t even tell me that you’re injured,” Bruce asks, and it’s a low, flat tone full of warning.

“Us,” Dev says, fighting off the wave of dizziness. “You are supposed to get  _us_  home. And if only one of us can make it, it cannot be me. If you died, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“That isn’t…” Bruce trails off, jaw working tightly.

Dev didn’t expect to be thanked, but somehow it still hurts, this anger. It makes him angry in return, bitter that Bruce can’t see how obvious it all is.

“I know it’s a bloody new experience for you, not being able to consider yourself the expendable one, but it’s both of us, or you alone, and it has been from the sodding start. I’ve come to terms with that and you bloody well ought to do so, and soon.”

The yell that tears out of Bruce is incoherent, wordless rage, and he slams the door so hard behind him the whole frame of the house shakes in the tree.

Dev can’t find the energy to care or be frightened, aside from the flinch at the noise. He tries to get up, and thinks better of it when he has to vomit in a pot nearby. He’s not Batman. He’s hitting his wall, and he can’t artificially extend his limits the way Bruce can. He crawls back into the bed and curls up, bitter and heartsick and shivering.

It’s worth it, if Bruce gets home. If it buys Bruce time, gives him the upper hand in his own recovery, then it’s worth it.

That becomes his mantra as he drifts in and out of consciousness alone.

He wakes when there’s a sound near his head, and opens his eyes to find its dark outside. Bruce is beside him, kissing his forehead the way Alfred checks for temperatures. He hisses at the fever he finds there and adjusts a new cloth.

“M’sorry,” Dev mumbles, finding it hard to use his cottony tongue.

“Don’t,” Bruce says in warning. “You aren’t. Don’t lie.”

There are distinctions Dev could make if he had the energy, but he doesn’t, so he leaves it alone.

He must drift off again without realizing it, because the next time he surfaces, Bruce is in the bed with him and it’s pitch black outside the narrow windows.

“How’s…arm,” Dev asks, squirming to find a position that aches less. He stops moving when Bruce stiffens beside him, and Dev feels something is wrong before he realizes it’s the absence of Bruce’s hand in his. He’s gotten used to it.

“Dev,” Bruce says, his tone like fanged teeth gleaming with threat. “If you ask again, I’ll…”

“What,” Dev says, irritable and careless. He hurts too much to worry about any danger, and if the last thing he does is make sure Bruce is alright, then that’s a good note to go out on in his opinion. “This isn’t how this works. You don’t get to be fine because I’m not.”

“I am not the one who established that status quo,” Bruce says. He’s radiating anger and on a normal day, this would set a dozen alarms off in Dev’s head and get him moving away, to somewhere else, with unpleasant memories nipping at his heels. Now, he’s too winded from two full sentences.

“Arm,” Dev insists.

“You son of a bitch,” Bruce says. “Would you fucking shut the hell up.”

Dev is glad his back is to Bruce because it’s mostly the fever that’s making his eyes fill with tears. He blinks them away, surprised that his face is as dry as it is.

“Arm,” he repeats, through chapped lips.

“It’s fine, okay, I cleaned it,” Bruce snaps. “And your stomach and your leg and is there  _anything_  else you feel like you should share with me.”

This would be purely furious if Bruce’s voice didn’t betray him by cracking in the last few words.

Dev holds absolutely still for a breath, and then reaches a hand back for Bruce’s. Fingers close around his and he squeezes gently.

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling blackness creeping into his consciousness again.

Dev falls asleep with Bruce’s forehead buried in his hair, shaky exhales ghosting across his neck.

* * *

There is a period of time where Dev cannot separate minutes from hours. It blurs together, churning the fragments of memory and dream into a mess that is indistinguishable from reality.

He’s drenched with sweat and thinks, when he’s aware at all of thinking, that it’s somehow related to the spilled cups of tea and the sleepless nights on his feet. He lives the same scraps over and over.

When water is tipped against his lips, it feels icy and stirs him enough that pain floods into focus and he retreats from it.

“Wake up,” a voice orders at one point.

He doesn’t often ignore orders from that voice in  _that_  tone, but this time, he does.

“Please, wake up,” the voice pleads, seconds or days later.

Dev tries to explain why he can’t, and how sorry he is, but he spills another cup of tea on an operating table and is distracted.

There’s a flash, a dizzying careen and vibrant color, and then everything is cold.

* * *

When he wakes up, it is to white walls and a distant thrum and blessedly soft sheets. The walls are not white, he finds when he actually looks, but papered beige.

“There you are, my dear boy,” Alfred says, when Dev blinks at the overhead lights. “We were beginning to be worried.”

“Oh,” Dev croaks. “Hullo.”

Alfred is sitting in a chair, the wrinkles on his brow smoothing out as Dev watches him. Dev frowns, vaguely upset about something he can’t quite parse.

A hand brushes his hair back, Alfred’s slender fingers carding through it.

Dev’s understanding comes in pieces and worry floods him as another clicks into place.

“Where’s Wayne.”

Alfred’s gentle smile is all the reassurance he needs.

“I sent him to shower. We’ve barely been able to separate the two of you since Mr. Kent brought you home. He made Dr. Thompkins examine him in this very chair.”

Dev makes the mistake of trying to sit up.

A hand, as gentle as it was in his hair but decidedly firm, presses him down.

“You, Kiran, stay where you are. I’ll go fetch him if it’s that urgent.”

“There was a dinosaur,” Dev says, stupidly. He can’t seem to catch his breath and his chest hurts. “It was…a sodding…there was…it came out of nowhere and…”

He is only distantly aware of Alfred shouting and approaching footsteps and the door banging and hands patting his cheeks and then an exchanging of places. Then, suddenly, he’s wrapped up in a familiar hug, with warmth cuddled close to him and Bruce’s voice in his ear.

“Breathe, Dev. Breathe with me.”

Dev is breathing and then he’s crying and swinging his arms around Bruce and clinging and not caring and it takes all of a bewildered second to realize the sound of his sobbing is echoed because Bruce is crying, too.

“If Clark had been an hour later,” Bruce says, so low Dev almost doesn’t hear the words. “Dammit, Dev, you can’t ever do that again.”

“I’m not particularly planning on a repeat of  _any_  of it,” Dev says, choking on a sob. “Bloody hell.”

Bruce’s laugh isn’t loud or startling but the hug tightens and Dev steals the chance to press a kiss into Bruce’s hair this time.

“At least I was with the goddamn Batman. I wasn’t joking. You’re a marvel, darling.”

Bruce’s answer to that is his own shaky exhale.

“Please don’t make me laugh again,” Bruce says. “I’m sore everywhere.”

“How’s your arm?” Dev asks and Bruce lets go of him just long enough to flick his ear.

“Tomorrow, you get to ask that. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Dev agrees. “That’s bloody perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> clark takes bruce to magic space hospital and he gets a new arm, ta-duh.


End file.
